Assessment of groundwater potential zones in parts of the semi-arid region of Anantapur District, Andhra Pradesh, India using GIS and AHP approach

Increasing urbanization and the population's demand for water shortages in urban and rural regions prompts a decrease in groundwater resources, to the need to plan sustainable development and watershed management. Remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS) and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) are useful approaches for distinguishing possible groundwater areas of India. A total of eight sets of thematic layers have been selected to influence the storage of groundwater potential in the region concerned and a suitable weight is assigned to each factor based on the Saaty's nine points and the weights are normalized by AHP. The groundwater potential zone (GWPZ) of the study region was prepared by integrating the different thematic layers with the support of ArcGIS software. The present study results indicates that 5.36 km(2) has a very good GWP, 193.45 km(2) has a good GWP, while 184.09 km(2) and 12.27 km(2) are under moderate and poor GWPZs respectively. The study found that a simple GIS-based AHP approach is reasonable for making precise and dependable estimates, especially if the order of the criteria used for expectation is consistent. The present study results showed the effect of consistency criteria that the ability of the method to give an accurate prediction depends on many criteria's that are used. The study found that the basic GIS based AHP approaches is capable of producing accurate and reliable for better planning and managing the resources in an effective way.